Grown
by Veritas Found
Summary: It doesn't matter who you are – mum, tin dog, parallel dad, or bad wolf – growing up is all a part of life.


**Title:** "Grown"

**Author:** Wish Wielder

**Fandom:** Doctor Who

**Pairing / Character Focus:** Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith, (Parallel) Pete Tyler, Rose Tyler

**Challenge:** N/A

**Theme / Prompt:** N/A

**Word Count:** 1,805

**Rating:** K Plus / PG

**Summary:** It doesn't matter who you are – mum, tin dog, parallel dad, or bad wolf – growing up is all a part of life.

**Notes:** Pete's World; pretty much carries through most of S1-2, and ends post-Doomsday/pre-reunion (end of S4, babies!).

**Disclaimer:** "Doctor Who" and all respective properties are © the BBC. Megan D. (Wish Wielder) does not, has never, nor will ever own "Doctor Who".

_** "Grown"**_

"Oh, Jackie, don't be silly! It's all part of growing up – it'll pass."

That's what Mo had told her the day she had come home to find a farewell note from her baby girl. Jackie hadn't been so sure, but sure enough after a few months Rose was back on her doorstep, nursing a broken heart and mind-numbing debt. She had been angry, but she had shoved it aside at the time; her daughter needed help, and – no matter how foolish her decisions had been – she was still her mum. And while some parts of growing up – like broken hearts – had to be learnt the hard way, Jackie knew that there were still some things only mums could help with. Like picking up the pieces.

So she had done what any mother would do. She offered a shoulder, listened any time Rose needed to vent, helped find her a job, encouraged her to go back to school – she was there for her. She helped her as she got back to Rose.

But it wasn't really Rose she got back to – not the Rose she was before, the one that was carefree, naïve, and painfully optimistic. She still had some of those qualities, but there was a jaded edge to her now. One that made her more wary of men – one that sent her back to safe, reliable Mickey Smith when she was confident enough to get back on the dating scene.

Jackie had thought they were past the Jimmy Stones stage when Rose had vanished for a year. And though the police continued to bring Mickey in for questioning, she knew he would never hurt Rose. She believed his story – that Rose had run off with some man (though she didn't necessarily believe the part about a magical blue box). After all, Rose had dropped her life before for a man. What was keeping her from doing it again?

"It's all a part of growing up," Mo had said. And Jackie knew some lessons took time and repeated mistakes to pound in.

But when she had come back, with that goofy-eared man and no intention of staying, Jackie realized Rose wasn't the only one being taught a lesson the hard way. She was, too, though maybe – for her – the lesson was so much harder than any Rose was learning at the time. She was learning to let go.

Because she was a mum, and mums needed to grow, too.

– W –

"This growing up stuff – man, I don't know…"

It was a line in a song his cousin had played for him once. Mickey hadn't understood it at the time, but he hadn't understood a lot back then. He hadn't understood why his best mate had left her school and home – had left him – for some strung-out rocker. He hadn't understood why he couldn't stay angry at her when she had come to him the night Jimmy had left, crying and needing the comfort only a mate could provide. He hadn't understood why he had forgiven her as soon as he had seen the first tears. He hadn't understood why she had come to him before going to her mum.

But he never said anything, because that's not what Mickey Smith did. Mickey Smith was faithful, loyal – a true pal through 'n through. He rolled with the punches (except for that one he gave Jimmy Stones a week after Rose had come to him, when he had found him passed out drunk in a park). He was easy-going. Excitable, a genius – but still a coward. He had to have been to let her walk away from him again.

But when that big-eared man had shown up, saving him from those shop window dummies (after Rose had saved _him_, mind), he had been afraid. He knew that the man could only mean trouble, but when he had asked Rose to come with him…he protested – once – but still let her go. Because somehow he knew it would make her happy, and that's what he wanted.

He should have fought harder, but Mickey Smith was never a fighter.

It was over a year before he finally found out just what he was. One of the Doctor's old friends had let him know; he wasn't the man behind the desk like he had once thought. In the Doctor's entourage, he was the tin dog.

It had taken a group of bat people to make him realize he didn't want to be the tin dog anymore. It had taken him a month, relative time, with the Doctor and Rose to realize he couldn't be Rose's anymore. It had taken a parallel self to realize he could be something more.

And it had taken a crazy old man, an invasion force of metal men, and that parallel self's death to make him brave enough to do it. Brave enough to grow.

– W –

Pete Tyler would have thought that, by the time he was forty-more-like-fifty, he would have it all down. Well, maybe not _all_ – but a good deal of it. The way he saw things, making it through nearly five decades of life had to mean he was doing something right and had a basic handle on how things worked.

As it was, at nearly five decades of life he didn't really have anything down at all. He was a successful businessman and richer than he could have ever dreamed, but his life was really only working out professionally. His personal life was a wreck.

By this point in his life, he had planned – hoped – to be married with at least two children. Preferably a girl and a boy, but he didn't care; he just wanted kids. As it was, his wife had adamantly refused children and had left him because…well, he wasn't really sure why. Jackie had never really needed – let alone given – any reasons for doing things.

His life had completely flipped the night he met that server at his (technically) ex's birthday party, and that flipping finally allowed him to admit that he really didn't know anything at all. One of his oldest sponsors and friends was a deranged lunatic, his (ex-)wife had been murdered by said sponsor's army of metal men, and he had been introduced to parallel worlds. From where he had stood that morning, he was so ready to admit that he knew nothing…

But it had opened his eyes in more ways than one. That server was his daughter, from a parallel world. A world where he had died nearly twenty years ago. A world where Jackie had actually loved him, and loved him still – even if he was dead.

It took him time – nearly three years – to finally come to terms with that. Every time he'd talk with Mickey about Rose and the parallel Jackie he'd find himself wishing he could know them – that he hadn't turned Rose away when she had said she was his daughter. Nearly fifty, and he was finding that life was still as confusing as ever – just with more regrets.

"She's your daughter!" Jackie had said that damned day, after Rose had popped back to her own universe. And he had said she wasn't – she was _hers_. He had no obligation. But still, he could remember the time he had wanted the obligation – the part of him that still did – so with one more shout he had gone after her. He had nearly been pulled into the Void, but he caught her – he hadn't even known she was falling. He had known that going for her would trap her here, with them – away from the Doctor.

Nearly fifty years of life, and he didn't know anything. He was thrust into the role of father for a broken-hearted twenty-year-old, and now he would be a father for his own child – a baby his new-old wife was three months pregnant with. He didn't know how he would handle it, or even if he could.

"Thanks, Dad," Rose told him the morning after they had left that gray beach behind, when he brought her a cuppa and a hug to start her day with.

He didn't know how, but he thought that – maybe – he could learn.

– W –

She had been a child when she had met him. Not by her world's standards – not entirely – but to someone as old as the Doctor, Rose Tyler was barely an infant. So she had latched on with all her might, trying and learning and hoping that some day he'd see her as more than just a 'stupid ape'. Someday she'd be more than a child, and maybe then he'd see her for what she was – a woman, a partner, a friend…a hand to hold.

She had thought she was so grown standing there on that prehistoric planet with him. "Forever," she'd promised, and she had meant it. She had seen ghosts, zombies, werewolves – she had faced the devil himself, and she thought she was past the 'stupid ape' stage. Thought that maybe she was finally starting to understand what it was all about. And he had smiled at her, and she smiled back, thinking he had finally understood it, too.

On the other side of the walls, she could see it so much clearer.

She had been foolish and naïve, so very childish, to think that she could give him that "forever". And he had smiled to humor her, not because he had believed her – because he knew then what she knew now, what he had always known. She was just a human, and humans withered and died. Humans couldn't give "forever" – not a Time Lord's "forever". And even if she could, the Universe would always have other plans.

_She_ wouldn't get "forever" – not with him. Her forever would be different, a lone wolf separated from her pack – but enough to make her understand. Enough to let her know what he had always known, because she wasn't human anymore, wasn't Rose anymore – not fully. She was the Bad Wolf, and the Bad Wolf wasn't a child.

And as she stood at the graveyard, hidden near the back with a minor perception filter woven into her hat's veil, she watched them lower the casket that contained the charred remains they called Rose Tyler into the ground.

Her mother was old, her father was dead, Mickey was nearing fifty, and her baby brother was married with a three-year-old of his own. They aged. They withered. They died. But not her – she was timeless, a Bad Wolf in human clothing. It was better they thought her dead, thought her to be the charred body in that casket now covered with ground years old.

Rose Tyler was dead, but the Bad Wolf lived on. And as she walked away from her own funeral, she knew that she had grown.

**A.n.:**_ I'm still trying to figure out how Hairspray inspired this…either way, I'm still pleased with it, and I really needed to write something Rosie after hearing the super fantabulous news today. :__D_


End file.
